(Re)Written Lines
by Mrs.AddieMontgomeryShepherd
Summary: He thinks about giving her the days back. But if he does, she will never be his River. And he will never lose her again. But time is a funny thing and some things can't ever be changed.


**Author's Note: Nothing's mine, of course. And will also never be.**

* * *

"_To save you, I could do anything." - Rory Williams_

* * *

At the end, he thinks of the beginning.

A maddening archeologist in a library; the wife he had not met then.

He knows, she has yet to live the adventure that will be her death.

And all he wants is to give her back the days she lost. The days spend in Stormcage. The days spend waiting for him. The days her parents should have had with Melody. The days to come.

He could do it; give her all those days. After all, he is the Doctor. He fixes things. He could fix her, even though she says there is no way.

But there is, because he had lied to Amy. He had known all along where her baby had been and there were – are – days when he thinks about ignoring River's words of warning to never dare and rewrite her life however hard it had been.

At the end, he thinks he should give her the days to spare her the pain of losing him again like she did so many times before, and in turn easing his own – because you cannot miss something so much it hurts you have never known, can you?

And before his eyes, timelines are changing; the future and the past rewrite themselves around Melody Pond, because that is who she is now.

The River Song he knows will never exist, he tells her overjoyed parents when he stands in front of their blue door one evening with their little girl in his arms.

"But you can't ever travel with me again.", the Doctor says, "With me around, she won't be safe."

In his arms, Melody starts wailing. Of course, she is not happy with that situation; being the child of the TARDIS _and_ a Pond. But they have been over this. So he lies, as he hands her over to Rory: "She doesn't like it out here. Says it's too cold."

And while the happy father retreats into the warmth of the house, Amy is back to her bossy self: "Explain."

He shrugs. "I went into the orphanage and got her out. Rewrote her timeline, and mine too, by doing that. Got an awful headache and the TARDIS wasn't too happy either. Melody is fine, though. Kept insulting my bow-tie."

"I didn't mean that. I know you, Raggedy Man. And I know River. She wouldn't ever let you rewrite her life and you wouldn't dare. You always choose each other, no matter what. But today, you chose us. You have seen how it ends, haven't you?"

The Doctor nods. "And I can't bare it another day. Rescuing Melody means River will have all those days I stole from her. All her lives left to life. She won't ever have to witness you being snatched away from her because of me. Because that is what happens. Happened. Will never happen. All my Ponds, save and sound."

"So, this is goodbye, yeah? You won't ever come back for us? For Melody, once she is old enough?"

He shakes his head. "People would always be after us, Pond. They mostly were. Why do you think we never told anyone we were married? But tell your daughter something from me. Tell her, she will always be protected. And give her this once you think she is old enough to have it." He hands Amy River's sonic and her vortex- manipulator. When she looks up again, the Doctor is gone and Melody is still crying inside the house.

She won't stop for the rest of the night.

* * *

Melody Pond is not trained to be a weapon. Instead, she grows up with loving parents who'd like to give her the stars if they were able to. But they can't, not anymore, so instead they tell her wonderful stories about a mad man in a blue box, traveling the stars. An old friend, they say and Melody asks: "Will I ever meet him?" Her mother just shakes her head, smiling sadly at her little girl. "In another life though,"Amy answers then, "You meant the world to him."

Melody doesn't understand her mother's words at the time, nor does she understand why she keeps dreaming about a man with floppy hair and a bow-tie taking a blonde woman's hand and running with her across the universe.

It's all she ever dreams about, besides the blue box and the stars she likes to watch at night; her arms propped up on the worn blue book she doesn't remember getting.

Down on Earth, where she lives a mostly normal life – more often than not outsmarting people and getting into trouble – Melody is not aware of the Doctor looking out for her. He still can't let her go.

But he tries, every day. A life with her, only a memory now (Hasn't it always been?), he tries to push into the depth of his mind; to not watch her every step. She is save. She is save now.

And then there is the moment, just one tiny moment, where he stops watching her – so it happens.

The Silence get hold of her, in a library of all places shortly after her graduation from high school. Amy and Rory are with her, when the clerics close in and Madame Kovarian towers over her.

"And so we meet again, Melody Pond. You will never escape us.", she grins manically.

And her words are like a trigger, because suddenly Melody remembers the blonde woman in her dreams being in a similar situation. If she doesn't run now, they will drug her, just like they did back than. So she makes a dash for the doors, but the clerics are fast. What they don't know, though, is that Melody remembers a training she's never had. She manages to defeat some of them and disables weapons of others...and then a shot falls. Melody can see her parents, pale and afraid, running to where she finds herself suddenly sitting on the ground. The frantic fight has stopped; all eyes are glued to her.

She glances down and sees her shirt being soaked in blood.

This has happened before. She had been shot before, in an office in Berlin. (She had never been to Berlin. And certainly not in 1938.) The wound is not fatal, it doesn't even hurt. Something else does, though, and it has started running through her veins, setting her on fire from inside until her body can't hold it anymore. She gets up, golden light swirling from her fingers. Something is coming and it's going to be big. Oh, she loves it. Melody smiles at her parents. "Mom, Dad – run."

The Ponds know what is going to happen, so they listen to their daughter.

They aren't even out of the door when the change starts and the Silence falls, taken out by regeneration energy.

Oddly enough, the last thing in this life Melody Pond thinks about is the blonde woman.

* * *

The woman that emerges the library, bouncing curls and grinning is...

"River Song." Rory murmurs, staring at his daughter.

"Who's River Song?", Melody asks.

"An old friend. Someone you don't know.", Amy says pointly, elbowing Rory before taking to Melody.

She wants to ask if she is okay, but obviously she is – that's regeneration for you. "Do you know what just happened?"

"Well, yes. I got shot, I regenerated and – ooooh, it's all going on down there isn't it?" She's caught her reflection in the car. "The hair! It just doesn't stop, does it! Look at that, everything changes. Oh, but I _love _it."

Rory sighs, opening the door. Melody became River, again. This is going to be trouble.

Amy catches his eye, thinking along the same lines.

They need to get Melody back into the relative safety of their house. And then God help him, if she doesn't get the Doctor on the phone.

She pushes her daughter, who is happily going on about her teeth by now, into the backseat.

* * *

Melody has never needed much sleep. She spent many nights sitting on the top stair, listening to the old house's noises, doing her homework or simply watching the stars through the window behind her.

Tonight, though, she listens to her parents in the kitchen.

"I've been ringing him all day.", Amy says, pacing, "Nothing."

"He said he wouldn't interfere."

"I know what he said, thank you. But he's the Doctor and she's River Song, _again_."

"You think we should -"

"Yes, stupid face. This reality he created was never for us."

"Well then."

"OI! MELS! GET DOWN HERE!"  
Melody races down the stairs.

"How did you know I was listening?"

Amy smiles fondly at her. Oh, her sweet little girl staring at her with River's eyes who used to be so full of spoilers. They aren't know and it isn't right.

"You have always been special, Melody.", she says, "A miracle, really. Do you remember the stories we told you about the man in the box when you were little?"

"Yes, but - "

"Just listen. The stories are true. We used to travel with him, and you happened to be conceived in the ship, which is why you aren't completely human. A part of you is Timelord, which made you able to change the way you did today and - "

"I know.", Melody interrupts her, just to stop abruptly and stare at her mother. "How can I know that?"

"Sometimes, we have memories that we never could have made. Except we did, in another life, a rewritten time. Persons we only just met but feel like we have known them forever. Things we keep searching without knowing we lost them. It's what you have been doing for a long time now, isn't it? You're searching for a man in a bow tie and floppy hair, who runs across the universe."

Melody's eyes widen. "How do you - "

"Some things,"Rory interjects softly, "always have to happen, however much you change history. And there need to be made sacrifices for. So if you decide to go looking for him, tell him something from us: He should never have changed a thing."

Amy hands her the Vortex manipulator and the sonic. "When you look for him, you will need this."

Melody's hands flutter over the equipment, which feels so utterly known.

She has figured the items out in less then five minutes, but she won't use them until the wee hours of the morning.

Rory will stumble into the kitchen, still sleepy and swearing because he got the early shift on a Sunday and find a letter.

_5123, Luna University, Archeology._

_Give mom my love._

_X_

* * *

She looks, walks and talks like River; she even goes by that name now, but she is not his River.

And she never will be, he realizes when she asks: "Who are you?", as he accidentally runs into her on the campus of Luna University. (He's not checking up on her, _he isn't_. The TARDIS just got it all wrong. And then kicked him out.) He didn't know how painful those three little words were until now. His River had loved him, hated him, forgiven him... and had always known who he was and now this River stands in front of him, curious and a bit frightened, because: "I feel like I know you. But then I should remember you and I can't, so... have we met before?"

Time and time again, he wants to say, future, past and present. In a rewritten life you only remember in a dream we were everywhere and everywhen. I watched as run, River Song, through all of time and space; from each other, to each other. Just like you said.

"No, I have just one of those faces.", the Doctor says instead.

Somebody behind her calls her name and she turns to see who it is.

Her current...the guy who wants to be her boyfriend.

"Look, I -", she says, but the strange man with his even stranger fashion sense is gone.

And it makes her incredibly sad.

Why does it make her sad?

* * *

Melody has a string of dates and some lovers in between. Some of them – just a few – are honored enough to call themselves her boyfriend.

She cares for them, but she doesn't love them. Can't. It feels like there is only one person she has ever loved and he is not here.

You can't miss something you have never known, but somehow she does.

Sooner or later, people pick up on that. It's when she knows to leave them.

"It's interesting.", the Gammagirl from Prehistoric, who clearly fancies her, says, bringing her back to the cafeteria she is currently sitting in.

"What is?"

"There is a legend in the Forests. About a warrior's lost wife."

"Go on.", Melody says, leaning back in her chair.

"They say, there is a man walking the stars. He is hundreds and hundreds of years old and so very alone, because he is the very last of his species. Once upon a time, though, he had a wife who was just like him. And they loved each other so much, she wrote him messages in his lost language and he ran with her through all of space. But a warrior always is a warrior – he is meant to destroy. He was the cause of her destruction. And he couldn't bear it. So he bend time and took her out of its supposed stream, rewriting their whole story and losing her willingly so that she could life all her lives in peace, while he runs across the universe as far away from her as possible so he won't hurt her anymore.

The legend, by the way, gives a description of the warrior's wife. Hair as untamed as the universe itself, eyes guarding a thousand unlived stories within their green depth and a character that can be just as much a force of nature as the water that was her namesake. Reminds me of you."

Melody laughs. "Well, thank you, but you know, if I were that warrior's wife – I would make damn sure to run after him and right my timeline."

"Funny.", the Gammagirl said, "That's exactly what she said. The legend doesn't stop with him running.

It's said that the legend itself was founded when the warrior's wife arrived in a cloud of smoke and lightening in the middle of the forest, demanding that my ancestors would listen to her and telling them her story, ending with the promise that she will find him."

* * *

The legend is already in the back of her mind, because the rest of it is occupied with searching for traces of the man with the bow tie, who still takes her hand in her dreams and runs with her through space and time, when she realizes that something is wrong.

There are gaps in her notes and gaps in history books that definitely weren't there the last time she consulted them.

And then the gaps are filled with events that she simply _knows_ never happened.

New York falling to the Weeping Angels.

Humanity not kicking the order known as the Silence off their planet, without even remembering.

And then she thinks about the legend from the Gamma Forests and realizes -

Time has gone wrong.

It's a fact, but one only Melody knows. No one will believe her if she doesn't prove it – or even better, finds a solution. (And maybe, just maybe, she'll find her good man then.)

And so she starts searching for the gaps; for the things this history got wrong. For a pattern.

For him.

What she finds out, she writes into her blue, worn book.

Soon the pages are filled with memories, snippets of a life lost.

Triggers that help her to remember, like: hair the color of custard.

_("Custard, really sweetie?", she snorts, holding a book out to him._

_He splutters. "Well...River, you've got to admit your hair is yellow...ish. Just like custard. And they didn't know what blonde meant. Or yellow. So, basically,I had to show them the color of custard so they knew what to look for. And they found you, didn't they? Besides. I like custard. And I like your hair.")_

Red heels.

_("Hell in high heels, that's what you are."  
"And don't you just love it?")_

A blue diary.

_("Some stories, Doctor... they have to be lived. Spoilers...")_

Poisonous lips.

_("River! You can't go around and, and ...__**lipstick**__ people!")_

Back to front.

_("There will be a time when I won't trust you, because I won't know you then.", he says, tightening his grip on her. She holds her breath, worried, but he snuggles into her and murmurs. "But we'll have lifetimes left to life before those days are coming.")_

The woman named after the water.

_("There isn't a word for Pond. They just have a river there.",Amy says when she shows her daugther the prayerleaf which she carries with her since Demon's Run. She knows that Melody won't ever come back, but River always does.)_

Ageless God.

_(Her parents age and River hides the damage. He doesn't like endings.)_

The Doctor, a man of mystery one only finds when they look deep enough.

She does and discovers a man she forgot.

Melody writes a thesis on him and becomes a Doctor herself.

The night of her graduation, she dreams about being kidnapped and forced into a spacesuit.

She keeps away from the library after that but continues her search for the Doctor.

What she finds is herself.

They have already made her a professor when she discovers that she is what went wrong with time.

She doesn't know why or how that can be, but it has something to do with the Doctor.

So Melody starts traveling, mostly in time, sometimes in space and makes a name for herself.

The TARDIS still monitors her child's every step but keeps away from her, not because her thief wants her to but because it's not the right time to interfere.

Not yet, anyway, not for this Melody who has only just started leaving her marks all upon history.

But the TARDIS exists through all of time and space, so there is always the point when her child is lured in by the prospect of discovering what made the Library lock down. Even in this wrong reality.

So the ship rings her cloister bell and makes her thief watch as two realities collide and Melody Pond meets his 10th incarnation.

"Why are you doing this? Stop it! Just _do_ something! This shouldn't even be happening!", his 11th self cries, "She's your child!"

The TARDIS just hums a sad tune and the Doctor sees Melody reacting to her unlived memories.

She greets him with "Hello sweetie" and even asks about the adventures he would have had with River.

The Doctor turns the monitor off.

He can feel time shifting and he knows how it will end, so there is no need to see it.

Sexy rewards him with a jolt and also sends him flying through her console room when she decides to cross his timeline and brings him – under protest – to Melody.

She sits in the chair, about to wire herself in, when the blue box arrives between her and the unconscious Doctor.

The man, who stumbles out and nearly collides with her is... the man in the bow tie. Her Doctor.

Tears are swimming in his eyes as he takes her hand, just like he always did, but this time not to whisk her off to see the universe.

She can feel her memories unlock.

"Oh, you beautiful idiot, what have you done?", she murmurs, feeling tears streaming down her face.

"I'm sorry.", he murmurs, hanging his head, "It was the only way I could think of to save you. To spare you all that pain."

She reaches for him. "Doctor, look at me. If you give me the chance, I will always chose that life with you, because you are worth it, whatever the cost. So don't you dare change a thing about it.

I know you hate endings, but letting me go is the only way for you to meet me.

This is not good bye, my love. This is hello."

She takes his face between her hands and kisses him with all her love, before she leans her forehead against his' and whispers: "You have to go. You will wake up any second now."

But he doesn't leave her, he just steps back into the TARDIS and makes her invisible.

And River tells his 10th self about Darillium and he knows the smile is directed at this him when she says: "You and me, time and space. You watch us run."

* * *

He leaves the book that is her life on a shelf in the biggest library of the universe.

It's been that way forever.

The Doctor always has to find River in the Forest of Dead.

In the end, she is, was and will be the only water there.


End file.
